The Dungeons & Dragons Virtual Table

[Scribble]

Wait a minute... I call shenanigans!


England doesn't have sausages! They have bangers!

 

[Goonalan]

Wait a minute... I call shenanigans!


England doesn't have sausages! They have bangers!

Sausage, banger.

Forget the semantics, you should see my sauce antics.

I'm a two serviette (napkin) kinda guy.

As for 'call shenanigans', your misappropriation of the English language has been duly noted, we'll be watching you.

On a side note the Mrs. is taking me out for a 'full English' tomorrow morning- variety is the spice of life. We'll not be needing the Marriage Guidance Counsellor any time soon.

 

[OnlineDM]

That is one of the current flaws with FGII, you can scale a token and lock it but that affects all other tokens. If you scale a big monster down your noraml tokens get tiny. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning IMO.

My question is off topic I guess, but you really can't re-scale tokens individually in Fantasy Grounds? I use MapTool, which is free software, and I just assumed that a paid program like FG would be able to do everything the free program can do and more. Rescaling is simple in MapTool - I actually have buttons that I click to make a token gigantic for a moment so that the players can see the art clearly, and the click again to make it normal size.

I'm not bashing FG here (I hear it's a great program) - I just am honestly surprised.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A true statement, but talk about understatement...Wow!

The original was supposed to be 1st person rather than overhead (so as to only show what your character sees, rather than see the whole area as if you had a spy drone at your disposal), have all the D&D minis rendered into 3D figures, have 3D terrain and objects, realistic lighting effects, and be able to import your personalized 3D character into the environment, along with the basic tools required to run a game session.

Instead, it's a basic 1d overhead map program with the basic tools to run a game session. And it's almost three years after the original demo...

"It's the same concept of interconnected tools to facilitate a D&D session, with a different look and feel." - I don't know if WotC's PR skills have gotten better lately or not (as I don't really follow Wizards anymore), but their ability to spin has definitely increased. (For the record, I do not see that as a good thing...) Do they really expect people to read that and just go "Oh...okay..."

The correct answer to: "Is this VT the same virtual tabletop we saw demos of when 4th Edition was announced?", would have been: "No. This is basically the same as other virtual tabletops you see around the internet and provided by other companies and services, just with 100% official 4E support and connectivity with DDI's character builder and our future monster builder." That last part is the only thing that separates it from other VT's, and has absolutely nothing that a non-4E player would be interested in. (...and on a side note: didn't WotC's own polling show that customers actually wanted the monster builder and other features first?)

As a non-4E player, a VT with a three-dimensional first-person environment with variable lighting effects, 3D terrain and objects, and customized/personalized miniatures and figures - would give me a reason to go to Wizards.com rather than sombody elses site. However, this Virtual Tabletop? Not a chance.

Maybe you haven't got experience with VTTs. I mean I can't say with THIS one ATM until we see it but if it is even CLOSE to state of the art you have full control over lighting, visibility, vision blocking for walls and such, etc. Go play with Maptool and you'll see what I mean. The experience is excellent, in many ways superior to using a battlemat and figurines. There are some real advantages. For instance each player can only see what THEY can see. The effects of lighting and such are MUCH MUCH more clear and useful with "Fog of War" and lines of sight that are obvious just from looking at the screen. This is why a fair number of people are using things like Maptool and a projector now in their ordinary games, the DM can do a bunch of stuff that was only dreamed of before. You also can't really discount the ability to have all your resources tracked accurately etc. This adds a level of utility that is golden. There are a HUGE number of reasons why a flat 2d VTT is a great thing.

In fact honestly I don't think I'd even really WANT a 3d equivalent. I can make artwork for a 2d environment. I can easily produce tokens, maps, icons for objects, etc. There's no way I'm going to spend months learning how to use Blender 3d to do something infinitely crappier for a 3d game. I'm not going to want to just use 'stock' stuff really either. I use a lot of stock art now with MT but you can only go so far with that and sometimes you need your own. The players also REALLY like being able to make their own tokens and portraits and such. Again, there's no real way they're going to ever master making 3d models, it is a LOT harder.

I don't really think you'd gain that much from an FPS type perspective either, and if you're going to use a bird's eye view most of the time you're just as well off with the simpler and easier to use 2d space. Some day we'll have 3d holographic scanning and display tech or something and a "Virtual Space" will be a cool concept for RP. I doubt 4e will be a well adapted set of rules for that though.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

So it's Maptools.

Only with less functionality.

And they're going to charge you.

Um.

 

[OnlineDM]

By the way, my full take on this is now on my blog.

Summary: I'm optimistic, but I'm very interested to see what they will do about:

• Pricing
• Map creation
• Monster/PC creation
• Rules support
• Customizability
• Finding a game
• Using the program with a projector for in-person games

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

I wasn't too thrilled about this announcement, since I doubt that the pricing structure or terms of use will allow me to use it with my distant friends without DDI accounts.

However, I just got an invite to the 'friends and family' Beta, so I'm hoping this will allow me to test it out with people outside the Beta, I saw something in the email about "requesting passes" for sessions, so hopefully that will let me try it. I'm at least interesting in taking the program for a spin, as I bet I can use it for my dungeon tile mapping needs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So it's Maptools.

Only with less functionality.

And they're going to charge you.

Um.

We don't know how similar it is to Maptool. It could be better in any number of practical respects.

Seen it? I'd wait and see what functionality it has, we know nothing, so what makes you think it is less?

They haven't said they are charging a dime for it yet.

Realistically, as a long time Maptool user, there are plenty of ways the program could be a better VTT for 4e than Maptool is. Maptool has a HUGE amount of customizability but that doesn't mean it is ideal. You can use the Rumble (or other) 4e macro frameworks, but my assessment of them is that they are a good bit of work to use. They are written in a pretty obtuse scripting language that was NEVER designed to do complex stuff like a 4e framework. You can make it work, but Rumble is SLOW (I've had power macros take 3-4 MINUTES to run) and it still lacks many basic nice features. Character importing is piecemeal and very buggy, and the same for monsters. It lacks any kind of real inventory control. In fact it really isn't a character management tool at all except in a very basic way. It lets you invoke a power, attack, hit, and do damage, and marks power expenditure and tracks conditions, HP, AP, and does a few other things. That is GOOD, but you still have to set it all up with the right math and there are tons of powers it can't handle, etc. If you just level your character you have to go in and tweak a whole bunch of numbers in your powers and whatnot for instance. The other 4e frameworks are roughly similar, some do certain things better, but none of them is close to being ideal.

So, a VTT that is 4e specific and handles a bunch of stuff elegantly? Oh yeah. It doesn't have to be Maptool in all its glory to succeed. If you can drop a PC onto the thing from .dnd4e file and use your powers and have the right math, the rest is gravy. Right now it takes 2-3 hours of work to set up a 4e token for Maptool. Make that 30 SECONDS and you enable a whole new level of pickup gaming and flexibility.

 

[Bagpuss]

This morning it was bacon, sausage and egg- and when I smiled nicely at the lady she game me an my mate an extra half-sausage each.

See I have black pudding instead of the bacon, but strangely I got an extra half sausage as well, where I get my breakfast butty.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

MapTool has integrated chat support. My preference is actually to have the voice system handled outside the VTT, primarily because I would rather development time be spent working on the VTT functions and such than rebuilding the wheel when there are several freely available voice chat options.
/snip

As far as I know, there is no sound support whatsoever for Maptool - voice chat or otherwise. What am I missing?